Some people have figured out how to make easy money off a dead relative.

Fraudsters who ripped off the Social Security Administration by illegally collecting benefits for their deceased family members cost taxpayers more than $106 million between 2014 and 2016.

The feds say that catching and prosecuting offenders is a top priority and it’s getting easier for them to detect this type of fraud.

On Wednesday, a Broward County woman was convicted of 90 counts of stealing government money for more than 10 years.

Myriam Etienne, of North Lauderdale, stole more than $130,000 worth of benefits – that should only be paid to the living – for her grandparents, who died in Haiti in 2006 and 2009. The home health aide used the money to pay her mortgage, make some payments on her 2015 BMW X6 and cover her own living expenses, evidence showed.

“We certainly don’t need the walking dead, or zombies, getting social security payments,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, D.C. based advocacy group. “This is real money that taxpayers are losing to people who exploit the system.”

In 2016, Social Security paid approximately $968 billion in benefits to nearly 66 million people in programs where payments are supposed to terminate when the individual dies.

This type of unsophisticated fraud, usually perpetrated by a family member who lets the money keep pouring into an account after the intended recipient dies, occurs at a relatively low rate, according to expert analyses. But it still involves millions and millions of dollars every year and taxpayers find it a particularly galling offense, experts said.

“We shouldn’t be making these payments and people ought to be able to have confidence that their government is spending money wisely and appropriately,” said Ellis, from the taxpayer advocacy group. “This kind of waste and exploitation breeds cynicism.”

To a large extent, investigators said the system traditionally has relied on people being honest and trustworthy – or catching them, sometimes long after the fact.

That is changing, they say.

Etienne wasn’t caught until 2016 but authorities say her case is a good example of how they are closing loopholes and coming down hard on people who cheat the government.

She was exposed by a federal investigation that examined a simple fact: senior citizens tend to go to the doctor and use their Medicare and Medicaid benefits. If a senior is not getting medical care, they concluded, that is a strong indication that something is amiss.

In an effort to find cheaters, agents from the Office of the Inspector General for the Social Security Administration conducted an audit to identify people who were over a certain age and receiving social security but had not used their healthcare benefits in the prior three years. This type of audit started around 2012.

Suspicious cases were flagged and agents followed up to figure out if the intended recipients were still alive or if they had uncovered a case of what they call “deceased payee fraud.” The agency also uses other methods to try to quickly identify cases where the intended recipients of benefits have died but social security money is still flowing into their bank accounts.

Nationwide, 635 people were criminally convicted of stealing dead people’s benefits between 2014 and 2017, according to the inspector general’s office.

In the recent South Florida case, Etienne and her grandparents became U.S. citizens after they moved here in 1987. The couple also began receiving supplemental security income (SSI) benefits, which are needs-based monthly payments to people with limited income and resources who are disabled or over the age of 65. The money is supposed to pay for food, shelter and legitimate expenses for the living.

Etienne took over as the benefits payee in 2004 because her grandparents were elderly and sick. Officials testified she was warned verbally, and numerous times in writing, that she could face criminal charges if she failed to report that her grandparents had left the country or died. Officials recommend reporting death or departure immediately but there’s a grace period of 30 days.

Prosecutor Randy Katz told jurors that Etienne’s grandparents left the U.S. in their final years and returned to Haiti. Etienne’s grandfather Herman Etienne was 87 when he died in the Port-au-Prince area in January 2006. Her grandmother Genevieve was 90 when she died, also in Haiti, in June 2009.

The payments, which were direct-deposited into a joint bank account Etienne held with her grandparents, should have stopped when the couple left the U.S. before they died. Relatives said the grandfather left around 2003 and the grandmother in about 2008.

But Etienne never notified authorities and the money kept flowing into the account on the first day of each month, investigators said. Payments ranged from $1,396 a month for the dead couple in 2012 to $1,466 in 2016.

Jurors in the case laughed at some of Etienne’s excuses when she testified in her federal trial. She veered between claiming she did not know her grandparents had died and indicating that she knew they were dead. She acknowledged she had been very close to them and could not come up with a credible explanation for why she continued accepting and spending the money.

Investigators testified that Etienne admitted she knew she should have informed them of her grandparents’ deaths but later denied she had said that. During one interview, she asked to review a written statement she had given to agents, ripped it up and put the pieces in her purse when she realized she might be charged with lying to them.

The jury took about half an hour to convict her.

Etienne, now 49, faces a maximum of ten years in federal prison and fines of $250,000 when she is sentenced in April. She will also have to repay the more than $130,000 she illegally obtained. She had begun paying that back at $50 a month in 2016 after an audit flagged the benefits as suspicious.

Social security officials testified in the trial that the system has safeguards in place to detect and prevent fraud. Like other family members who serve as “representative payees” for older relatives, Etienne was mailed forms she was required to fill out and sign each year to account for how the money was spent.

Etienne simply made up her answers, writing that she spent about half the money on the couple’s food and shelter and the rest on other legitimate expenses like clothing and recreation, investigators said. Some years, the agency did not receive any response when it sent out the forms but that apparently triggered no action.

Annual cost-of-living increase notices were also mailed to Etienne and her grandparents at the house they had shared, which should have prompted her to report their deaths, the officials said.

Andrew Cannarsa, a spokesman for the inspector general’s office, said the agency has increased its investigations and enforcement in recent years, conducting more frequent audits and monthly sweeps to match recipients with death records.

The agency is also working to improve the accuracy and reliability of the death records it compiles, as well as the death records it receives from states and other federal agencies, he said.

The agency is working with states to increase the use of electronic death registration methods by the states, which helps improve the accuracy of the data used by federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration. Officials said it’s a slow and expensive process for states but the rate of participation is increasing.

Though some people may have gotten away with committing fraud for years, Cannarsa said the agency is catching more offenders now and is not as forgiving as in the past.

If a person comes in and admits they let things slip and it snowballed for them, the agency will often negotiate a repayment plan. But if investigators figure it out and have to spend time on an investigation, they will pursue a criminal prosecution that could send the person to prison – both to punish them and deter other offenders.

“The agency will also ask periodically to see the person if there is some concern: ‘Bring them in, let’s see how they’re doing,’ ” he said. “We also rely on the public to submit anonymous or confidential tips to us if they suspect a family member or friend or neighbor is doing this.”

Ellis, whose organization analyzes government stewardship of taxpayer funds, said the Social Security Administration has stepped up its efforts to investigate and prevent this type of fraud.

“I don’t want to give the impression that the Social Security Administration is asleep at the switch,” he said. “Some people are always going to try to rip off the government but Social Security is doing more to catch them and punish them.”